


To Be Touched, To Be Loved, To Feel Anything At All

by sweeterthankarma



Category: The Bold Type
Genre: Break up sex, F/F, Post-Season/Series 02, angst and feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 12:35:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15685545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweeterthankarma/pseuds/sweeterthankarma
Summary: It starts after the Scarlet party. Adena is back at the hotel, and she isn’t speaking. Kat showers and waits in the bathroom longer than she needs to, sitting in steam and a wet towel and trying to steady her breathing.When she’d arrived home, Adena had been staring at a notebook, filled with French words, looped in cursive, and it felt like a dig. Adena knows Kat doesn’t speak French.





	To Be Touched, To Be Loved, To Feel Anything At All

**Author's Note:**

> So, I had a lot of feelings after 2x10 and thus, this happened. I have my complaints with canon, but if I'm being honest, I love some good angst and I feel like the Kadena situation is a fresh take on relationship drama, even if it isn't necessarily what us shippers want to see. I'm confident Kat and Adena will find their way back to each other, though.  
> Title comes from the song "Strangers" by Halsey and Lauren Jauregui.

It starts after the Scarlet party. Adena is back at the hotel, and she isn’t speaking. Kat showers and waits in the bathroom longer than she needs to, sitting in steam and a wet towel as she tries to steady her breathing. 

When she’d arrived home, Adena had been staring at a notebook, filled with French words, looped in cursive, and it felt like a dig. Adena knows Kat doesn’t speak French. 

Now she finally has inspiration, at least. She’s created something, she’s  _ creating  _ something, and it’s all started with the possibility looming in the horizon of Kat not being around anymore. How sickeningly delicious— the woman that inspires Kat with every ounce of her being can’t find anything to appreciate about her.  _ C’est la vie, _ she thinks. She doesn’t know what she expected, to be this happy and to have it last. She’s never been that lucky.

Kat wants to say something bitter and cold and true, something harsh like “you’re already doing better without me,” but that doesn’t have enough bite and it implies that she’s walked away from Adena, or let herself be walked away from. And she doesn’t want that, not now, not ever. So she swallows her pride, for her love. And that’s not an easy thing to do, especially not for her, especially not when Adena probably doesn’t deserve it. 

She’s in Paris for the first time of her life, after all, and she just had a ridiculously successful work event and the Eiffel Tower is bright and glowing outside her window and she could go stand on the balcony outside their bedroom and go stare at it for hours on end, in awe. It’s what she should do.

But instead she’s biting her tongue, pushing back tears, and waiting for Adena to react. 

She eventually mumbles something about going to bed and having something to do tomorrow. Kat doesn’t have anything to do tomorrow. 

    “Can I kiss you?” Kat asks quietly, and her voice shakes. She’s afraid of the answer she’s going to get.

Adena doesn’t speak and Kat wishes she would. She misses her voice, she misses hearing her talk about things she’s passionate about and even things she doesn’t understand, because her words are big and powerful and true, sometimes impossibly and intimidatingly so. She almost wishes she’d yell at her because then she could really hear her, and at least she’d know she’d invoked some kind of a reaction in her. She misses the way she used to make her feel things. (Did she ever, really, though?)

Adena kisses her, and even as it happens, she misses her lips already.

Because it’s not the same. It can’t be, not after everything they’ve been through, and maybe it’s Kat’s fault or maybe it’s Adena’s or maybe it was just life that got in the way, or maybe they were never meant to be. But it’s still better than nothing. 

Kat pulls her shirt off and unbuttons her pants, and Adena doesn’t assist her like she usually does. She just waits.

She heaves a tired sigh as Adena nudges her onto the center of their king size bed; it’s unceremonious and it’s almost like they’re not even trying.

Kat isn’t sure if  _ making love  _ is the right term for what this is— it’s not fucking, it’s not that reckless, and it’s not a hookup because they’re not broken up, not yet. 

But they’re going to be. It’s the last time, and although they don’t acknowledge it, the bittersweet of  _ not enough—  _ for either of them— hangs thick in the air and Kat tastes it more than she tastes Adena. 

It feels hopeless, even as Kat comes with a quiver and a string of curse words that have more weight behind them than they usually do. When she crawls between Adena’s legs, hooks them behind her neck as she kisses goodbye to her body, she feels the reluctance in Adena’s bones. Sadness and sorrow and sorry’s and missed chances, there’s too much to be said now, and the time to speak is long gone. 

Adena whines into the pillow, moans something that sounds a lot like a sob, and she doesn’t kiss Kat again after that. She avoids her lips, but trips chaste fingers down her spine, across her collarbone, beneath her breasts to her ribs. It tickles at certain spots, but Kat doesn’t laugh like she usually does. Adena notices, and although they barely make eye contact, Kat sees the way she glances up at her, apprehensive and surprised at the lack of feeling she gets in return. It makes Kat feel even sorrier, but the moment is fleeting and Adena looks away almost guiltily. It reminds Kat that she isn’t the only one who’s made mistakes.

This definitely isn’t love making. Neither of them know what it is.

In the morning, Adena is gone. She leaves a note, something short and vague and insignificant signed with _ “from”  _ rather than  _ “love.”  _ She sends her a text too, and at least there she uses a smiley face emoji.

It’s like a sad, twisted joke, all of this. Kat is in the city of love and her love has left her.

  
  


Months later, Kat will touch herself to the ghost of the memory of Adena between her thighs. She’ll press deep and dig her nails in and make herself hurt, in mind and in skin, more than she had the day before, and she’ll pretend it’s Adena, or at least someone who cares enough to make her feel. It’s a change, this self-inflicted aggression, this need for consequence and reciprocated energy, and even if it comes from herself physically, it suffices. She’s starting to itch, to get brave again. Maybe tonight she’ll go back out to the lesbian bar. She hasn’t been ever since the night it all went to shit, and  _ god, _ she wonders how different would things be if she had just stayed home that night or at least not taken so many shots; maybe everything would be the same. Maybe she was just never what Adena needed.

There’s no way to know now. She has to start over. Every day, she says she will. Yet every night, she’ll crawl beneath her blankets and make herself sweat and pretend its Adena’s doing, and she won’t know, but Adena will do the same. She’s been doing the same, and when she dreams she imagines a world of art, a universe of colors and stars and grass and sky, and Kat, in the center of it all. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me in the comments or on tumblr @ sweeterthankarma where I have so many feelings about so many fictional characters, all the time.


End file.
